Telling The Truth?

The hardest thing is telling the truth. That's the prompt I chose for our fledging Potter County writing group in early October.

Go for the jugular I heard writing guru Natalie Goldberg tell me and the other 1,000 or so writers from across the world as she smiled secretively from my computer screen. Tell the truth.

But when does the truth come as self-indulgence - that sin of sin in my Puritan background. Puritans with their stern black clothing and even sterner rules. Johanna characterized our family as such long ago when she was new to this part of the world and to this particular family. And I remember that.

Truth telling in my writing - thoughts not self-indulgent but rather self-aware – not only the sparkling, fuzzy, warm things - but the dark, gray, sharp, icy things. Good thoughts and bad thoughts.

Again, Natalie's voice, "No bad, no good. Feel free to write the shittiest prose or poetry as the scribbles pour out on the page. Keep the hand moving." She also talked about the hardest part, removing the self- censor, the editor, the little demon sitting on your shoulder begging for attention as he (and it is a he!) tells me "you suck, that's crap, you're kidding yourself if you think you're a writer."

Looking back at files of my writing - those typewritten - yes typed on a typewriter and it needed a new ribbon - on newsprint. Some of was good - quite good - and some of it was ghastly - truly shitty and I'm the judge. That's my truth.

And if we don't tell our truth who will?

And what if I don't want to write about pain or sadness or frustration, disappointments and anger? Naming and recognizing those emotions, feelings, thoughts. If I don't and if nobody does, each of us is alone in those same things.  

It's hard to come to any kind of comfort with this truth at this time, in this place - in this United States of America. 

Linotype

As we planned my mother's memorial service, I knew I would tell about the years we spent working together at our family's newspaper. I didn't know exactly how I would frame it and in the weeks between her death and the arrival of our far-flung family for the ceremony in her church, I struggled with how to tell the story.

But just two days before the service, words began to flow. 

Since my mother has died, several have related to me that they first met her when on a tour of the local newspaper office. It was common for Camp Fire Girls and Cub Scouts to plan a visit the local newspaper. Kids would follow their leaders through that old swinging door back into what we all called 'the back room' and there would be this little lady, perhaps clad in her infamous orange and white striped pants, an inkstained apron tied behind her back and wearing that big smile.

She was a linotype operator. Linotype you ask? It’s just what it says - a machine that produces a line of type. It was a giant contraption and she sat in a rolling chair before the complicated keyboard. Her fingers flew across the keys accompanied by the clickety clack of the pullies and other mysterious innards of the machine. She’d press the lever with her right arm and soon a lead slug – line of type – would magically drop into the tray. And that was how the type you’d read each week in the newspaper was produced. Week after week, year after year.

From the time I was in elementary school, my mother walked those six blocks to work every day at a job she loved. She took great pride in mastering the intricacies of the linotype, loading the big magazines of brass matrixes that made up a font onto the machine, tinkering with whatever needed just the right touch to function. I can still see her on that worn-out rolling chair, her legs neatly tucked to one side, her feet clad in her Hush Puppy oxfords, She worked five and one-half days a week, and often going back to work in the evening on Mondays and Tuesdays, after fixing dinner for the seven of us. No take-out at the Heimel house!

As a child I was resentful when my mother went to work and I believed the only reason she was hired was because her father owned the newspaper. Those men in the print shop had to put up with her because she was the boss’s daughter. I wanted her to have a lady’s job– maybe in an office. It was embarrassing to have a mother who worked with the men in a dirty old print shop.

It was when I went to work at the newspaper - likely hired exactly because I was a family member - that I discovered a side to my mother that I had never imagined. She was the one knew just how everything worked and she was the one with the answers. I quickly came to realize that she more than held her own as the mechanical superintendent in the back room of the Enterprise. What a foolish girl I had been! 

I cherish those years spent working at the newspaper with my mother. She taught me how to design an ad or a pamphlet or even a book and how to mark up an ad for the typesetters. There were rules of typography– rules such as never use all upper case italics and, for heaven’s sake, don’t use every available typeface in the same document! I learned how to set my own type - not on the linotype but on the newfangled phototypsetting equipment. And pasteup – keeping all those lines of type straight!

Then there was proofreading, a special skill to spot the mistakes - the typos. Those of us in the business would always be just a little horrified when one found its way past all scrutiny and onto the printed page.

Though I’ve been long retired from using those skills learned from my mother at a paying job, I still use them. As a matter of fact, the funeral program you are reading today was my creation and yes, she was with me as I selected the fonts, decided about placement of the photo and other graphics and put everything together in an easy-to-read document that does the job it needs to.

She was also with me when I spotted the typographical error. I probably should have just thrown the pages away and reprinted but no - knowing how my mother was loathe to waste anything - I decided to let it stand.

Yes, I have learned the lessons well.

Anticipatory Grief

In my years on this planet, I learned that anticipation is imagining just how it's going to be - helping to carry us into the here and now when we really do have to cope - or we have to manage as my wise mother has been telling us of late. "We'll just manage," she says.

I've managed to avoid telling her that Donald Trump will be returned to the office he (so devastatingly poorly) managed in his previous four years. I managed through that long post-election night as I sat by her bedside, switching on my phone every half hour for news until it became clear the direction it was going. I felt smothered by that ominous darkness, the urgent voices through my headphones, and turned instead toward my mother, lying in a warm, comforting darkness, responding to my gentle touch on her forehead.

At 101 years old, my mother's likely been a Republican since she first registered to vote and she often referred to herself as a conservative - at least in the ways conservative used to be defined. After recent health setbacks, she has known her days here were going to be few and set her sights on helping to elect Kamala Harris - a woman - as President of our country. This from a woman whose own life - a good life - began just three years after women gained the right to vote in this country. 

Since that dark election night, I've managed to separate out those emotions tied to this election - the fear, anger, outrage, bewilderment, the grief - from similar emotions as I anticipate my mother's passing into the warmth and love of the hereafter. I used a therapist's technique - sealed it all up in a box and put it in a safe place, locked so all that dark red swirl of darkness can't escape - for now. I anticipate that I won't be keeping it there forever.

I have always stayed away from the word ANTICIPATORY in my writing for it seems hard, cold, tacking o-r-y on the end of anticipate - a perfectly good word, an action word, a verb. For it is an action, not a descriptor.

Anticipatory grief. Today, with my mother on the brink of joining that great swirl of loved humans in the deep unknown, just plain grief will do.

Voting In 2024

I voted yesterday, walking with my ballot up the stairs at the Gunzburger Building to be greeted with stern signs directing me to a video doorbell granting entry to the Vote Registration office, now featuring metal mesh securing the glass on the door. So we've come to this.

Donald Trump's lies about election integrity and security and his lies about voter fraud brought us to this place.

And meanwhile, folks are proudly proclaiming they're gonna cast their votes for a felon?

Trump supporters are actually supposing the convicted felon brings safety while accusing a former legal prosecutor of crime?

Yes, we've come to this.

Americana

Quick! Think of a food that could be termed 'All-American' - synonymous with the flag and motherhood and good times.

It's such a simple thing, light pinky-red in color, about five inches long and one inch in diameter with little pucker marks appearing at both ends of its cylindrical shape. It's got a bland texture, rather like canned pudding or instant mashed potatoes, An indescribable taste - sort of spicy, but not very. Or meaty, but not really. It's a taste all its own - it's a hot dog!

Hot dogs are almost a religion in America. Little kids love them, or at least that's what television commercials would have us believe. We've all seen that cherubic toddler sinking his tiny baby teeth into a hot dog, wrapped in a white flour, enriched bun, dripping with mustard, relish and ketchup. And we've seen the boy (of course!) and his father, enjoying a ball game with a hog dog in one hand and a soda in the other!

Mother and daughter go to town for a day of shopping and enjoy a hot dog from a street-side vendor. They're featured at parades and circuses and fairs and carnivals - everywhere!

Hot dogs are a staple fare at another all-American activity - the picnic. They're grilled over an open fire (charcoal usually, it's easier) until a thick black coating covers the pinky hue and the indescribable taste is replaced by a carbony, sooty, charred flavor. You see, everyone loves a hot dog even if he really doesn't like it.

Another plus for the All-American Hog Dog is its price, or so the women's magazines tell me. They also say there are a million ways to cook a hot dog. Boil it, fry it, saute it, chop it into pieces and mix it with anything. Pretend it's sausage. Pretend it's hamburger. Pretend it's chicken - but that's going a bit far. Smother it in spaghetti sauce, drown it in barbecue sauce. Mix it with beans. Whatever you do to a hot dog, it's still delicious, versatile and everyone's favorite.

The hot dog is readily available in numerous variations. Small neighborhood butcher shops stock them in bulk, buy one or two or even five. And the deli department of the supermarket has several variations on the theme.

The favorite place to find hot dogs is the huge porcelain and chrome case in the supermarket where they're surrounded by their cousins, luncheon meats. And it's there that I can read the label on the polyvinyl chloride bubble pack: "Contains beef and pork, water, salt, sugar, sodium acid pyrophosphate, spice, smoke flavoring, paprika, sodium ascorbate, sodium nitrite with BHS and BHT added to protect flavor."

From a 1976 advertisement from Hess's Department Store in 
Allentown. At the time, I worked as a copywriter and advertising
designer at Leh's Department Store, just up Hamilton Avenue

(I wrote this piece in 1976 for a writing workshop at Lehigh Community College. The instructor commented: 'A saccharine but biting invective in the guise of a commercial monologue. A sagacious variation on a theme - satire in the Swiftian tradition. Methinks this works more journalistically than fictionally.')

Jeannette

One of my writing heroes, Jeannette (2 n's and 2 t's) Buck died last week at the age of 85.

I first met Jeannette in the delivery room at Charles Cole Memorial Hospital as she stood at Dr. George's side, offering encouragement as I labored to bring forth my firstborn. Jeannette - tender and steady, observing this young couple's joy with a mother's heart, with a writer's heart.

I recognized her when we met again in a writing group organized by Leader-Enterprise reporter Wanda Rader.  Through the years, a group of us continued writing together. Dolores with her stories of  peacocks and Virginia's china, Muriel writing of her junk drawer, my mother writing about her grandfathers, me writing about my Woodstock experience and wishbones and the old neighborhood (a piece that might become a blog post). Other stories by other women who wrote with us now and then - brought together by our love of putting words together.

But Jeannette just wrote and wrote and wrote some more. She became an activist for AIDS awareness as she wrote through her son's illness and death. She wrote about grief, what she called the "loose board" that comes up to whack you in the face just when you think you're moving through it. Her beloved life partner lost to her after the long goodbye of Alzheimer's Disease. She wrote of that, too.

Her "Words Of Gold" in the local newspaper brought a weekly dose of local history, family history and rural life to readers across the country. Former editor, Donald Gilliland spoke at Jeannette's memorial service and among other things, he mentioned that she always met her deadlines - high praise in the newspaper world!

The internet arriving in Jeannette's yellow house on Rt. 49 brought her a whole new audience of readers. I considered it an honor to be on the list to receive her weekly column in an email. Her facebook posts and comments were sometimes silly, sometimes insightful and always well written!

Filed away for a moment like this, I have unearthed our writing assignments put together in a packet all those years ago. And this morning, listening to the rain on the roof, I'm thinking about writing - Jeannette's, and mine too, and I hear her whisper to me "just do it" – and I will.

(I blogged about one shared writing experience here.)

The Flight of Time

"Backward, turn backward, O Time, in your flight..."

That's the snippet of verse that runs through my mind as another summer is coming to its end.

The vintage photograph at the top of this post was in a tray of old Kodachrome slides, photos taken by my grandfather, this one likely in the 1940s. It's a photo of Mollie Spicer Beach, my mother's first cousin. I recognized her here though I only knew her as an older lady with thick, curly white hair and lips glossy with bright red lipstick, the kind that always left a little trace on the coffee cup.

It's a beautiful, essentially autumnal photograph. I wonder if she knew she was going to be her uncle's model when she donned the red coat, tied a kerchief on her head and selected the matching red pumps.

The snippet of verse also came to me from my grandfather. He often used it in his weekly newspaper column when reminiscing about the good old days.

It was easy to find the entire poem, written by 19th century poet Elizabeth Akers Allen. "Rock Me To Sleep" found popularity during the Civil War.

Some dispute arose when another (male) writer claimed to have written this verse though it is generally accepted that she was the author. Critics pointed out she wrote better poetry.

With all its sentimentality and nostalgia, here is "Rock Me To Sleep."

Backward, turn backward, O Time, in your flight,

Make me a child again just for tonight!

Mother, come back from the echoless shore,

Take me again to your heart as of yore;

Kiss from my forehead the furrows of care,

Smooth the few silver threads out of my hair;

Over my slumbers your loving watch keep;—      

Rock me to sleep, mother, – rock me to sleep!

Backward, flow backward, O tide of the years!

I am so weary of toil and of tears,—      

Toil without recompense, tears all in vain,—   

Take them, and give me my childhood again!

I have grown weary of dust and decay,—   

Weary of flinging my soul-wealth away;

Weary of sowing for others to reap;—   

Rock me to sleep, mother – rock me to sleep!

Tired of the hollow, the base, the untrue,

Mother, O mother, my heart calls for you!

Many a summer the grass has grown green,

Blossomed and faded, our faces between:

Yet, with strong yearning and passionate pain,

Long I tonight for your presence again.

Come from the silence so long and so deep;—   

Rock me to sleep, mother, – rock me to sleep!

Over my heart, in the days that are flown,

No love like mother-love ever has shone;

No other worship abides and endures,—      

Faithful, unselfish, and patient like yours:

None like a mother can charm away pain

From the sick soul and the world-weary brain.

Slumber’s soft calms o’er my heavy lids creep;—      

Rock me to sleep, mother, – rock me to sleep!

Come, let your brown hair, just lighted with gold,

Fall on your shoulders again as of old;

Let it drop over my forehead tonight,

Shading my faint eyes away from the light;

For with its sunny-edged shadows once more

Haply will throng the sweet visions of yore;

Lovingly, softly, its bright billows sweep;—   

Rock me to sleep, mother, – rock me to sleep!

Mother, dear mother, the years have been long

Since I last listened your lullaby song:

Sing, then, and unto my soul it shall seem

Womanhood’s years have been only a dream.

Clasped to your heart in a loving embrace,

With your light lashes just sweeping my face,

Never hereafter to wake or to weep;—      

Rock me to sleep, mother, – rock me to sleep!